New Character - Red Skull (Johann Schmidt) 5*

entrailbucket

@TheXMan said:

@entrailbucket said:

@heybub said:

@Gymp28 said:
I think people need to chill out a bit over how ‘terrible’ this red skull release is.
He’s got several self compounding abilities (Y’know, kinda like a certain character they’ve just nerfed into the ground?)

Yes his damage starts off poor, but I think it will ramp up quicker than people are accounting for:
Dust of death @ Lvl450: Deal 1299 damage, increasing by 326 per activation
These are 2 1 turn repeater tiles created per time this cheap ability is fired.
These will likely also count as special tiles for ‘In pursuit of the Cube’:
@ lvl 450: Burst heal for 3740 health (not super relevant). When this repeater tile is on the board Deal 416 additional damage to enemies per friendly special tile on the board - I’m pretty sure repeaters count as friendly special tiles?

Plus this will presumably be so much more viable once they nerf MThor into the ground soon*TM

Pair Red Skull with Agatha and Toni Ho and you’re surely off to the races?

It also provides another option to make protect tile teams viable, as if you’ve managed to spam SAP tiles you’ll be dealing an additional 416 damage per one of these on the board, with any powers and matches made. That’s potentially huge!

All of the above encourages you to kill him off early in the fight, but if you do that he becomes an AP battery. I honestly really like the design, and maybe others would too if they took a breath?

I think I am just still pissed off the game is still broken and the devs are pushing out new features. Fix the game, then focus on new improvements.

On paper, Skull looks weak, but maybe I was wrong. It's not always easy to tell based on the description, or maybe the numbers they published were incorrect. I hope he is good, that would be awesome, but I still stand by "fix the **** game".

They can't ever stop releasing new characters because that's how they make money.

If the release cadence stops or dramatically slows down, that's how you'll know that they're wrapping up the game.

You have said this many times. Is that the only way they make money? Why can't they just skip one or two while focusing on fixing things? Agree if they slowed down for very long it would indicate bad things.

Bonus is they could communicate this... something+about+skipping+a+release to+focus+on+fixing+things.

Their core business model is (still) selling roster slots. The release events are designed to push a new character down to players who will have to decide to buy a slot or let the character expire.

Also, the more characters there are in the game, the higher the chances that someone will pull someone they don't have and have to buy a slot.

For many of us, roster slots are no longer a concern. The rest of the game doesn't look like that at all.

They can't slow the cadence because they have ongoing costs. Cloud servers, bandwidth, staff, etc, but the major one is that the Marvel license is crazy expensive. They know how much they make from a new character and I assume everything is budgeted based on that.

JoeHandle

@TheXMan said:

@entrailbucket said:

@heybub said:

@Gymp28 said:
I think people need to chill out a bit over how ‘terrible’ this red skull release is.
He’s got several self compounding abilities (Y’know, kinda like a certain character they’ve just nerfed into the ground?)

Yes his damage starts off poor, but I think it will ramp up quicker than people are accounting for:
Dust of death @ Lvl450: Deal 1299 damage, increasing by 326 per activation
These are 2 1 turn repeater tiles created per time this cheap ability is fired.
These will likely also count as special tiles for ‘In pursuit of the Cube’:
@ lvl 450: Burst heal for 3740 health (not super relevant). When this repeater tile is on the board Deal 416 additional damage to enemies per friendly special tile on the board - I’m pretty sure repeaters count as friendly special tiles?

Plus this will presumably be so much more viable once they nerf MThor into the ground soon*TM

Pair Red Skull with Agatha and Toni Ho and you’re surely off to the races?

It also provides another option to make protect tile teams viable, as if you’ve managed to spam SAP tiles you’ll be dealing an additional 416 damage per one of these on the board, with any powers and matches made. That’s potentially huge!

All of the above encourages you to kill him off early in the fight, but if you do that he becomes an AP battery. I honestly really like the design, and maybe others would too if they took a breath?

I think I am just still pissed off the game is still broken and the devs are pushing out new features. Fix the game, then focus on new improvements.

On paper, Skull looks weak, but maybe I was wrong. It's not always easy to tell based on the description, or maybe the numbers they published were incorrect. I hope he is good, that would be awesome, but I still stand by "fix the **** game".

They can't ever stop releasing new characters because that's how they make money.

If the release cadence stops or dramatically slows down, that's how you'll know that they're wrapping up the game.

You have said this many times. Is that the only way they make money? Why can't they just skip one or two while focusing on fixing things? Agree if they slowed down for very long it would indicate bad things.

Bonus is they could communicate this... something+about+skipping+a+release to+focus+on+fixing+things.

Bi-weekly release could be a contractural requirement. Not that any of us would know.

I think skipping releases would be a terrible signal. Give the impression things are THAT BAD, could crash morale (yes, even farther) and initiate a cascading downward spiral. Or, drastically accelereate any existing cascading downward spiral.

JoeHandle

@entrailbucket said:

@MegaBee said:

@BriMan2222 said:

@allen_koholic said:
This is a perfect solution to the problem with Red Skull and possibly celebrating an awful ideology. Just make him absolutely terrible. Which this is. Now nobody will actually play him.

It sounds like from the most recent comments, that he's actually much better than he appears on paper.

No way would anyone on this forum misjudge a new character before actually using them. I refuse to believe it!

Plus he doesn't have a feeder (mostly) so the people testing him are (probably) running him at low covers/levels. That, combined with underwhelming/bizarre ability descriptions, creates the perfect storm of "this guy stinks" on here.

The fact that he's impressing some testers at 1/1/1 or whatever is an extremely good sign for his long term potential.

All the Hydra stuff is a slow-starting geometric build. Not what players chasing easy-button auto-wins are looking for, or apparently capable of detecting!

I have 2 covers on him, have Zemo low-champed. Hiding behind IM40 (who is at 483, but not using his match dmg (to the extent I could avoid it) or abilities) these two took down a level 615 node, taking near-zero dmg, no problem.

Goodness, such evilness. And those hissing sound effects, creepy.*

---

_

• Yes, I have the sounds at low volume. Deal. But not that mindless music, yikes LOL_

LavaManLee

As an aside, does anybody else's brain, when seeing "Red Skull (Johann Schmidt)" immediately think of John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt? Could just be me. That just gets stuck in my head everytime I see it.

ThisisClemFandango

What's the build consensus on this guy? I was thinking 454?

Bustapup

@heybub said:

@Gymp28 said:
I think people need to chill out a bit over how ‘terrible’ this red skull release is.
He’s got several self compounding abilities (Y’know, kinda like a certain character they’ve just nerfed into the ground?)

Yes his damage starts off poor, but I think it will ramp up quicker than people are accounting for:
Dust of death @ Lvl450: Deal 1299 damage, increasing by 326 per activation
These are 2 1 turn repeater tiles created per time this cheap ability is fired.
These will likely also count as special tiles for ‘In pursuit of the Cube’:
@ lvl 450: Burst heal for 3740 health (not super relevant). When this repeater tile is on the board Deal 416 additional damage to enemies per friendly special tile on the board - I’m pretty sure repeaters count as friendly special tiles?

Plus this will presumably be so much more viable once they nerf MThor into the ground soon*TM

Pair Red Skull with Agatha and Toni Ho and you’re surely off to the races?

It also provides another option to make protect tile teams viable, as if you’ve managed to spam SAP tiles you’ll be dealing an additional 416 damage per one of these on the board, with any powers and matches made. That’s potentially huge!

All of the above encourages you to kill him off early in the fight, but if you do that he becomes an AP battery. I honestly really like the design, and maybe others would too if they took a breath?

I think I am just still pissed off the game is still broken and the devs are pushing out new features. Fix the game, then focus on new improvements.

On paper, Skull looks weak, but maybe I was wrong. It's not always easy to tell based on the description, or maybe the numbers they published were incorrect. I hope he is good, that would be awesome, but I still stand by "fix the **** game".

He's deceptively strong for sure and I'm almost certain he needs to be 3/5/5. The red and blue compliment each other perfectly and if you're running with Zemo to reduce his ability cost you're firing those powers very frequently so the damage boost ramps up pretty quick, especially because hydra tiles count as special tiles. I also THINK the damage boost and healing is stacking with each cast. I might be wrong about that because so many things seem to be triggering it's kinda hard to keep track.

The problem will be speed. If you last a few turns so that tiles start activating then it's literally hundreds of thousands of damage with Zemo per hydra tiles expiration. Will he last that long against JuggsSam? No

bluewolf

What do people say when the Red Skull walks into the room?

Oh, Schmidt

Zarqa

@LavaManLee said:
As an aside, does anybody else's brain, when seeing "Red Skull (Johann Schmidt)" immediately think of John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt? Could just be me. That just gets stuck in my head everytime I see it.

Honest answer: I keep thinking ‘that’s not how you spell Hugo Weaving’

WilliamK1983

@Zarqa said:

@LavaManLee said:
As an aside, does anybody else's brain, when seeing "Red Skull (Johann Schmidt)" immediately think of John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt? Could just be me. That just gets stuck in my head everytime I see it.

Honest answer: I keep thinking ‘that’s not how you spell Hugo Weaving’

Not for Red Skull, but every single time I see unity here I immediately say the 311 line "My bros are down for the unity, 311 is down for the unity."

JoeHandle

@ThisisClemFandango said:
What's the build consensus on this guy? I was thinking 454?

Same here, at least initially

Bustapup

@JoeHandle said:

@ThisisClemFandango said:
What's the build consensus on this guy? I was thinking 454?

Same here, at least initially

I definitely think 3/5/5. The damage bonus from his blue is too good and black is more conditional on the enemy creating tiles he can remove. The red is getting progressively stronger each tick but when it's powered by the blue is going to absolutely smack at high levels

If black removed more than one tile per turn I'd think it's more valuable